Wraithblade (The Wraithblade Saga Book 1), page 50
“Of course I—”
He snorted derisively. “You think I believe you? You think my father believes you? I suspect you have other goals you’re not divulging to the rest of us, no matter how feeble and weak you pretend to be. If I find evidence of such treason, you won’t have to worry about keeping your Bloodbane dagger on you because it won’t be the peasant who slits your throat in your sleep.”
Zander let the silence hang suspended above them and looked him right in the eye, daring him to speak.
Daring him to lie.
Otmund barley breathed. His heart skipped beats with painful irregularity as it raced in his chest, and he figured the Lieutenant General could probably hear it. Sweat licked his palms, and he resisted the impulse to wipe them on his tunic. He held Zander’s gaze, refusing to let even the barest hint of his fear through his mask.
The Starling heir turned his back as the lull stretched on and returned to his place by the window. While Zander studied the spring day outside, Otmund’s gaze drifted to the floor as he sifted through how this affected his plans. If he needed to change course, he had to do it quickly. Perhaps he needed to word his suggestions differently, or—
No.
Regardless of Zander’s threat, this was still going to work. Even better, it would solve two problems for Otmund. It would end Zander’s suspicions and get him the wraith, all at once.
He cleared his throat. “I have a solution, if you’d stop being a brute for two minutes.”
Zander didn’t answer. With his hands clasped behind his back, he didn’t so much as acknowledge that Otmund had spoken.
“I spent a few evenings in the vaults—”
“Against my father’s orders to leave Lunestone, apparently,” the Lieutenant General interrupted. “I will ensure your access is more heavily monitored going forward.”
“I am a member of the Chamber!” Otmund slammed his fist on the table, perfectly justified in his rage as the wooden planks shook beneath his fury. “I’m the Master Strategist to your father, for the Fates’ sake. I will always have access to Lunestone, and when you stop interrupting me, you’ll understand why that is to your advantage!”
“Make your point, then.”
“My point,” Otmund muttered as he adjusted his shirt with an irritated huff. “Very well. My point is that while in the vaults, I discovered the location of Slaybourne Citadel.”
Zander glanced over his shoulder and raised one skeptical eyebrow. “And why is that interesting? It’s a ruin by now. After all these centuries, looters must’ve picked it clean. There can’t be anything left.”
“The Wraith King earned his title by being a specter of death, Zander,” Otmund chided. “He used fear and raw power to crush anyone he faced. You truly believe a man like that wouldn’t have measures in place to prevent looters in the event of his death?”
The Starling heir’s gaze drifted to the floor, and his brows furrowed with thought.
Good. Evidently, Otmund still had a chance to snare the man in his web. He simply needed to weave it carefully and play the warrior’s weaknesses against him.
Pride. Greed. Ambition. Despite Zander’s innate talent and clever mind, he shared the same flaws as the most easily manipulated men.
Otmund tapped his finger absently against the table before him to settle his racing pulse. “The legends and accounts we have of the Wraith King claim he was a powerful necromancer. We have a scroll hidden in the vault that alleges he laid traps in his home that would outlive him, merely as revenge on anyone who dared usurp him.”
“Rumors.” Zander dismissed the claim with a lazy flick of his wrist. “Unprovable nonsense, and I hardly see how it matters.”
“I figured you of all people would understand where I was going with this.”
Pride—the easiest weakness to exploit.
Zander glared at him over his shoulder, but Otmund didn’t so much as flinch.
“Why are you wasting my time with this?” the Lieutenant General demanded.
“Because the wraith has a new master, and that new master has no castle.” Otmund pressed his palm flat against the table. Splinters poked into his hand, but he used the blips of pain to distract himself from his fluttery breath as he planted the seeds of a new idea. “If this new master truly is a peasant, it means he has nothing. No stronghold. No base of operations. No fortune like Henry used to buy loyalty as he mounted his crusade. Why wouldn’t the wraith go home? The ghoul knows how to reach Slaybourne, even though it’s been lost to the world for centuries. We do, too. It’s the perfect fortress, and we can’t allow him to reach it on his own.”
“And why is that?”
“You should truly read the scrolls down there,” Otmund chided, scratching yet again at the man’s pride. “I’m surprised you haven’t.”
“There are tens of thousands of scrolls and books in the vault,” Zander snapped. “Unlike you, I have important matters to attend to on a daily basis.”
“Then let me enlighten you,” Otmund offered with a flourish of his hand. “After the Wraith King died, Death’s Door locked. Given how secured his city was, nestled in those mountains, no one was able to get in or out once the enchanted gate closed. Only a few survivors from that night managed to escape, and it was their accounts I read down there in the vault. Those who didn’t make it out screamed with terror as it closed, as if something were chasing them, and those screams lasted into the night. One by one, each scream cut short, until there was only silence.”
He paused for effect and lowered his gaze in an effort to appear traumatized by the true story. After so many years of lying and deceit, it felt strange to report something exactly as he’d heard it.
Zander leaned his palms against the windowsill and looked out over the water as he listened. “You have yet to get to your point, Otmund.”
“I’m about to.”
“And that is?”
“You and I can help each other. I can give you glory, and you can give me what I truly want.”
Zander shook his head, as though he were playing along to a game he loathed. “And what, pray tell, do you truly want?”
“Your sister,” Otmund lied. “If I give you the location of the fortress, you’ll be able to save her from a gruesome fate of dying at the wraith’s hands. Once you kill the Wraithblade, all you have to do is tell your father I was the one who told you where to go. The Wraithblade will be dead, we will have the wraith in our control, and I will finally be in Teagan’s good graces. In his gratitude, your father will give your sister to me. We all win.”
“That’s a simmering soul, you dolt.” The Lieutenant General leaned briefly toward Otmund as he lowered his voice. “If I kill the Wraithblade, that abomination will fuse with me.”
“Exactly.”
“What in the Fates’ name are you—”
“It’s the only way to bring the wraith back to Lunestone,” Otmund explained. “It’s the only way to keep it from killing you as you bring it here. You see, Zander, I discovered something else important while down in the vault. I unearthed a way to extract it from you without killing you. It’s complicated, but there’s substantial evidence it has been done before. I swear on my life and fortune, Zander. This will work.”
A brazen lie, but the man didn’t need to know that. Otmund had already crafted a story to feed Teagan about how the wraith had corrupted his son, just as it had warped Henry.
It wasn’t ideal to lose a puppet, of course, but they were running out of time.
The Lieutenant General leaned one shoulder against the wall by the window, and he lifted his chin as his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Even from here, Otmund could see the cogs of doubt and skepticism churning in the Starling warrior’s mind.
Luckily, he’d come prepared with a final argument that couldn’t fail. Everyone in Lunestone knew Zander hated his sister, and their feud gave Otmund ample fuel for his fire.
“Think of what it would do to Quinn,” he added. “You come in, just as her thirty days are nearly gone, and you save the day. You will succeed where she failed. Just imagine what it would do to her. She would be forced to accept that you’re her superior, and perhaps she will finally hang up her sword. I suspect it would break this warrior’s will of hers, don’t you?”
Zander’s body went eerily still, and he raised one eyebrow as his gaze darted toward the ceiling.
Hooked.
Now, to tempt his greed.
“Teagan will be even more proud of you than he already is,” Otmund continued. “He will see you as the heir you truly are. And who knows? With Quinn finally married off and out of the picture, perhaps you can even take Oakenglen. Think of it—the man with two thrones. You would be a living legend, with a legacy greater even than your father’s.”
A lie, of course. Once Otmund killed Zander and obtained the wraith, Oakenglen and Saldia would be his. He would be remembered while Zander became a footnote in history, and the Soulblud name would finally mean something in this Fates-forsaken world.
“It sounds like you want me to set an empty trap.” The Lieutenant General paced in front of the window. “We have no guarantee the wraith will even go to Slaybourne. We need proper bait to draw him out of the shadows.”
“Where else could he go? He has nothing, Zander. However, if you must take bait with you, take the only weapon that can kill the wraith. I suspect the ghoul wants the Bloodbane daggers, wherever they are.” Otmund feigned indifference despite the knife strapped to his leg. After the peasant had tried to take it from him, he’d slept with it every night.
“You may be right,” Zander admitted absently as he stared over the water. “It would be wisest to set a trap for him nearby. Why go to the fortress? Traveling to an isolated ruin would be risky.”
“Perhaps,” Otmund conceded. “But what does he want more? The daggers, or a fortress? If you set a trap anywhere but Slaybourne, would he take the bait?”
Zander didn’t answer. The man continued his pacing and rubbed his jaw, lost in thought.
“We don’t know enough about this man to know what he’ll do.” Otmund wove his fingers together and leaned his elbows on the table before him. “We must get to the peasant before he reaches Slaybourne. If he’s not already there, I doubt he will wait long. Setting a trap anywhere else risks letting him take back the citadel.”
“I can’t allow that,” the Starling warrior said under his breath. “If he already reached it, we’d be forced to mount a crusade against him. We cannot let this get out of control.” He paused, and his hand curled into a fist. “Not again.”
The Lieutenant General stared out over the massive lake while Otmund let the silence settle between them. As Zander neared his time as the Master General of Lunestone, it would become much more difficult for his father to control him.
Teagan’s era was almost over, and Zander’s ambition would be the end of him.
“You have a deal,” the Starling warrior said, his voice even and calm.
A jolt of relief shot through Otmund’s chest, but he resisted the impulse to smile in victory. “Smart man.”
“I’ll leave in the morning, but I have things to attend to first. In the meantime, get me a map.”
“I come prepared, Lieutenant General.” Otmund tugged an envelope out of the pocket in his shirt.
He set the parchment on the table, the folded papers inside too heavy for the wind to take with it. He’d provided more than enough detail on how to not only reach Slaybourne, but advice on how to kill the Wraithblade.
After all, he desperately needed this to work.
“Slaybourne is in the Decay,” he explained. “There’s a reason that part of our world has always been dead. The Wraith King’s magic is still active somehow, all these centuries later. Be cautious.”
Zander didn’t answer.
As the Starling heir stared out over the lake, Otmund took his leave. He stepped into the hall, careful to silently close the door behind him so as not to break the man’s focus. He needed the seeds of this plan to take root deep in Zander’s greedy heart.
If this ploy failed, Otmund would need to protect himself, and that meant doing something drastic he truly didn’t want to do.
For now, he would go to Mossvale and set his trap for Zander—and for the ghoul. The Wraith King had tarnished many men’s souls over the decades, but now Otmund would see if he could be the one to corrupt the dead.
ZANDER
As a spring breeze rolled off the lake, Zander closed his eyes and savored the sweet aroma of honeysuckle swirling in the wind. His mind buzzed with the possibilities Otmund had presented him.
Somewhere in Otmund’s plan, there had to be a thread of deceit he hadn’t yet noticed. The more he worked with the Lord of Mossvale, the more he doubted the man’s facade as a weak but otherwise useful tool. He once thought of Otmund as a pawn, but now he suspected the man was a player.
The plan seemed so simple—take on the mantle of the Wraithblade just long enough to bring the wraith to justice. Even if he had to sacrifice his pride to host such a vile atrocity of nature, at least the thing would die in the end.
But that all depended on whether or not Otmund had truly conceived of a way to extract the wraith without killing Zander.
Never trust another man with your life, his father had often warned.
It was advice he had always heeded.
If he ultimately bore the burden of the wraith for the rest of his life, so be it. His mind was sharper than Henry’s had ever been, and he could steel himself against whatever temptations the ghoul dangled before him.
In the end, he already had almost everything he desired. There wasn’t much the wraith could use to tempt him.
As word of his upcoming mission to the north spread through the ranks, the entire castle expected him to go to Hazeltide. It gave him the perfect cover to head to the Decay, as no one would suspect he’d changed course. He finally had the chance to do what he truly wanted to do—kill this wraith before it destroyed Lunestone.
The last time someone new had discovered the wraith, hundreds of thousands of people had died. Henry had conquered Saldia like a black tide of smoke and slaughter.
Teagan had bowed before the last Wraithblade, claiming that he’d chosen to play the long game for the sake of Lunestone’s future. Zander, however, would not bow to this new conqueror.
He had always revered his father, but the more he dwelt on the man’s errors, the more he wondered if Teagan had gone soft. He’d let a simmering soul run free to teach a girl a lesson about playing war, when Lunestone’s future depended on the public believing the souls were gone. He’d submitted to a warlord and corrupted the Lightseer name by honoring Henry’s demands. He hadn’t sent a crusade for a simmering soul in over a decade, and the one Viceroy who had defied orders and gone on her own had never emerged from the swamps of Nethervale.
Though the simmering souls still existed, Teagan had clearly given up on his attempts to destroy them.
He’d given up on his duty.
One day, Lunestone would pass to Zander. Perhaps it was time for him to show his father exactly the sort of Master General he would be.
He rolled out his shoulders and, as he debated the risks of his plan, he paced the decrepit meeting room usually reserved for the newly enlisted. His feet tapped against the floorboards, light and nearly undetectable from his modified Prowlport augmentation.
The greatest risk, of course, came from facing the wraith.
In his career thus far, there had been twelve attempts on his life. Each time a necromancer had come for him, they’d waited until he’d traveled alone into an isolated area. Only then had they attacked. They had all lost, of course, and he’d gleaned quite a few useful tidbits about Nethervale as he’d tortured them. It had taken him several assassination attempts before he finally saw the pattern, but now he always went into isolated stretches of the world prepared.
This time, he would be the one to set the trap.
He would walk into the Decay alone to give the Wraithblade incentive to follow, but he wouldn’t underestimate the wraith’s abilities. He would bring enough enchanted weapons to take down an army.
Zander would ambush the Wraithblade right in front of Death’s Door. Never the patient type, he would need to ensure his prey learned only enough of his plan to ensure the man came to him.
The more vocal gossips in the castle would help him achieve that.
Of course, spreading whispers of his plan meant others might wander into the Decay, but only those who knew Slaybourne’s location would survive. Though his father would eventually learn about his disobedience, all would be forgiven once he secured the wraith.
He frowned with disappointment as a thought occurred—Quinn would hear about his plan, too. If she interfered, he would have to put her and the Wraithblade in their place at the same time.
As his plan fell into place, he rubbed his freshly shaven jaw and grinned.
He would be the man who finally rid the world of the simmering souls. His name would go down in history as the Great Lightseer, the man who defeated the last shreds of the Great Necromancer. The man who overcame the darkness. The master of light.
He would become more of a legend than even his father.
Zander stared out over the water, more certain than ever that this would work. It was time he gave his father—and all of Lunestone—a taste of what the future held.
Chapter Fifty
Quinn
As the morning sun crept across the sky, Quinn sat on a balcony railing in Lunestone’s southern tower and stared out over the lake. Her legs dangled high above the waves as the water smashed against the castle’s walls. Wooden boards in the empty pier groaned as the lake churned, and white foam crashed across the planks that would be teeming with life in mere hours as the supply shipments came in.
A gust of wind tore through her hair, and the red curls blocked half of her view. The gale shoved at her back like a child trying to send her over the railing, but she tensed her abdomen and kept her precarious seat.
